Hydra Plantation Radio

Last Barometz Collection: Hydra Plantation Radio

photo: Nathalie Mba Bikoro; courtesy of Galerie Wedding Berlin 2016

A project on buried traces of colonial histories in Berlin's Wedding District.A selection of plants growing in the urban neighbourhood which have naturally cross-pollinated with exotic seeds from Africa and Latin America, largely planted in Rehberge Park for the constructions of human zoos and propaganda African film sets in the early 20th century. Imported by the German colonies for movie props.The plants act as a metaphor for the evolution and the historic remnants of displacement in the area and tell visions of an imagined post-colonial history of uprootedness, influenced by the incessant processes of urban change, on Hydra Plantation Radio.As the vibrations and sounds of the plants are broadcast live through local radio waves in Berlin, they become testimonies for living monuments.How can living memories appearing as sounds become records of a changing environment? What do these sounds and voices tell us of growing diversity and the history of immigration? Are our voices signs of cannibalist processions of the fauna we are ingesting into our bodies? How do we apply these memories of sounds as testimonies of a changing neighbourhood?

Kilimanjaro Hinabsteigen

Photo: Julia Ziege; Kathrin; courtesy of Galerie Wedding Berlin 2016

Kilimanjaro HinabsteigenDen Kilimanjaro hinabsteigen: Koloniale Trümmer & Erinnerungen im WeddingArtist Walk mit Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro11.09.2016 ab 13 Uhr, Dauer ca. 3 Stundenin englischer Sprache, max. 15 Personen»We always believed that testimonies should come from the dead, but what about the living? are their testimonies not part of forming visible monuments? Are our voices signs of cannibalist processions of the fauna we are ingesting into our bodies? How do we apply these memories of sounds as testimonies of a changing neighbourhood? what do these sounds reveal about our diversity and immigration? Last Barometz collection form a station of live feeds collecting the diversity of the elastic histories tied to colonial debris for over a century. They form part of an uprooted plantation whose debris is an archival memory of digital sounds performed as a radio station. they are urban myths of all the histories they have collected becoming fractal seeds splitting into different embryos. for every time these plants would get uprooted, the plants would regrow by mixed pollination and human alterations.«Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro

Future Monuments: Urban Legends of the Hydra (If You Fail To Cross The Rubicon)

The voices under the earth are those of some of the 8,000 colonial soldiers prisoners of WWI held in Wünsdorf’s Halfmoon camp between 1915-1919. Africans, Latin Americans, Asians and Eastern Europeans serving for the French and British troops were held in the camp. A large number of Muslim soldiers lived in the camp. The first Mosque in Germany was built in this camp partly as a propaganda tool to raise public funds towards the war and for public display rather than for religious intent.Archived by the Prussian Recording Commission, the sound project curated by linguistic Wilhelm Doegen was created in the purpose towards the great German project of a Museum of World Cultures. These voices mixed together on display in galleries with architectural artifacts from Africa and Asia, display messages of fear, messages of hope, stories, scripts, jokes and songs. The world project that Doegen set out excluded the inclusion and visibility of Black women both in the sound archives and in cinema, where African women increasingly disappeared from leading roles directed by Tempelhof’s UFA Film Studios. These women were leaders and members of human rights movements and anti-colonial organisations spanning two world wars and post-war decades. They played in the jazz entertainment industry, played in propaganda African cinemas, and were leading academics. Where are these women in Doegen’s history? How did they leave their mark in modern times?The LautArchiv at Humboldt Universität houses one of the biggest collection of Doegen’s recordings of the time with over 134 international languages and dialects from around the world recorded in colonial camps and Human Zoos in Berlin. The selected recordings in the suspended earth balls are those of these men singing about women, their wives, sisters, daughters, mothers and goddesses (1915-1935).

It is believed that only male voices were recorded, however 3 womens’ voices were identified in the collection from Asia & Africa. They are singing. Some of these songs can be considered as parallels towards songs of emancipation notably familiar in jazz music which was the political cultural resistance movement of the early 20th century played widely in the entertainment industry in Germany and inside labour camps. These women once displayed in Volkerschaus and often residents of former Garten Kolonies in Berlin played in such films singing and dancing in jazz bands. The infamous German colonial projects believed that the production of culture and knowledge could only be transmitted by men and not by women.100 years after the Halfmoon camp opened, a refugee camp was built over the former site to house Syrian refugees in numbered blue barracks standing on top of the former wooden barracks of the colonial camp from 1915, replicating the exact architectural layout. In 2015, a memorial ceremony was held by the British and Indian governments to restore and replace parts of the old cemetery of some of the British Indian soldiers in particular, with new grave stones and new names. The restoration included imported fresh green grass from Britain mixed with soil from Wünsdorf to cover part of the cemetery ground.As seen in the exhibition, the green grass are remnants of praying carpets for which Muslim prisoners of the Halfmoon camp were often persecuted for praying and the replica dimensions of some of the selected graves.